Thursday, March 7, 2013

Insurance only part of disaster resilience, says climate change panel

Guardian Development Network (UK): In most developing countries, farmers risk losing their crops and livestock to droughts or floods, and the recent intensity of these climatic shocks has been record-setting. As the losses from these events mount, the developing world has been turning to the experiences of richer nations in transferring risk through mechanisms such as insurance.

But experts – including the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its special report on managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change adaptation (SRex) have sounded a note of caution in portraying insurance as a panacea for climatic shocks.

Even in the developed world, insurers are reluctant to provide regional or even nationwide coverage for floods and other natural hazards because of the systemic nature of those risks, the report pointed out. Globally, only about 20% of the losses from weather-related events were insured between 1980 and 2003, the report said. In some countries, such as the Netherlands, which is exposed to high flood risk, insurance is non-existent; the government provides compensation.

The SRex expressed only moderate confidence that disaster insurance mechanisms could increase resilience, Tom Mitchell, lead author and head of the climate change programme at the UK's Overseas Development Institute (ODI), said.

Mitchell wrote in a blogpost on the Climate and Development Knowledge Network that although the report says insurance "can help to finance relief, recovery and construction, reduce vulnerability, and provide knowledge and incentives for reducing risk", it also says "under certain conditions, such mechanisms can provide disincentives for reducing risk"....

June 2009 – At the studios of Cleanskies TV, I was interviewed about the costs of climate change, and discussed adaptation efforts underway in the US and around the world.

May 2009 – I helped draft the scenarios for Rising Waters, a multistakeholder scenarios effort focused on climate change adaptation in the Hudson Valley. The final report is now completed and available here.

May 2008 – I reviewed two books on climate and energy in the New Leader magazine: James Gustave Speth's The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, plus Robert Bryce's Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence.

January 2008 – A very local paper covers a very global issue.... The Litchfield County Times in northwestern Connectictut ran an article in January 2008 about Carbon-Based.

Now available: Climate Change Adaptation in 2011

A selection of my writings from 2011, plus some of my posts, as well as links... all focusing on the risks of climate change